thai

This is a dinner that I made specifically to pair with the baked tofu from Monday, and one that we make all the time. We love Thai food, and Thai green curry is something that I order almost every time I go to a Thai restaurant.

Curry, though, can take some time to simmer and build flavors. I love doing that BUT definitely only on weekends. Weekdays aren’t the time to add little pinches of this and that or be dealing with whole lemongrass and jalapenos, nope. So THIS Thai Curry is the polar opposite in terms of effort: Vegetables, coconut milk, green curry paste. Full stop, done and done.

Happy first day of school! For public school kids in our area. Not anyone in my house or most people reading this, but happy Monday anyway! Let’s eat some beef.

Since school is starting now-ish, I’ve been working on some new dinners that are quick, easy, and delicious. This comes from my obsession with kid sleep – they need to sleep more than they do, they can’t sleep until they eat, dinner can’t take five hours to make, that kind of thing. Tons of sleep for kids yields better moods and better focus in school plus more time in the evenings for grownups, so once the dirty work of getting small people to sleep is done I really only see benefits to the situation.

But we’ve got to eat early enough to make it happen! Enter, steak bites. They cook way quicker than a whole steak and don’t require resting time, and while they marinate you make the rest of dinner – in this case, rice and raw veggies that get a quick slaw treatment with lime juice and salt. Then, the steak bites cook for maybe five minutes total, and dinner is ready! …

Quite possibly one of the best new things I’ve mad this year, and Jay’s new favorite for sure.

The story is this: Jay went vegetarian last year, then decided to eat meat again, then stopped eating meat again. Then the very day he stopped eating meat again he broke his leg, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t the tiniest bit annoyed. No problem kid, let me hold your bottle of pee 10 times a day and also make special meals for you.

But obviously I did it and lived to tell the tale and I made an excellent nurse and short-order cook, if I do say so myself.

So ALSO in that time Jay realized that if he just laid around all day and didn’t feel like eating because of pain medication he’d lose weight, which is true, but also maybe not the healthiest way to go about such things, so don’t think that this is a weight loss advice article. But, Jay did lose some weight over the summer and went back to being a mostly-vegetarian and has really tried hard to stay healthy and eat yummy foods in the process.

And I, now that I’m not carrying around bottles of pee anymore, have tried to make some fun new recipes that taste decadent but that are good for you and easy to make.

That was a really long explanation to tell you this: I made a creamy soup without cream and it tastes like curry and is cozy but not too heavy and you’ll love it. Let’s get to it.

Healthy to offset any damage we did over the weekend. Flavorful so that we aren’t so sad to be eating plain chicken breast with steamed veggies. Vegetarian for Monday or any day. Vegan, too. Also. Coconut curry drizzle.

Is there anything else to say, really? Besides the fact that I’m catering a big event at city hall tonight and am super nervous and also have spent two days making brownie bites at an incredibly slow pace? You should know that, I think.

But this quinoa. It’s simple, delicious, and healthy. What could possibly be wrong with it? I served this cold as a salad, but the bites I tried right after it was cooked when it was still a little bit warm were great too, so eat this at any temperature that floats your boat! The GREAT thing about this is that you could make the quinoa way ahead of time and keep it in the fridge, then just toss the veggies and seasonings in whenever you feel like eating this for an even faster version.